The Veni ensemble and pianist Ivan Siller premiered ‘Avondboek-Nachtboek’ by a Dutch composer Piet-Jan van Rossum in December 2023 in Bratislava. It was recorded by the Slovak radio and this recording will be published on cd, together with the pianoconcerto of Daniel Matej. The cd-presentation is on June 18th 2024.

Next to the cd-presentation, there will be a small concert with chamber works on the program. AVONDBOEK – NACHTBOEK (2020) is my third piano concerto, after ‘alle afstand herleid’ (2006) and ‘a young woman came up to me’ (2014). This piece is dedicated to – and written in memory of Alexej Stanchinsky, the first composer to write neo-classical music who drowned in the winter of 1914 crossing a river, carrying only a few clothes and a book with him. Some say he was on his way to a monastery, others think he went to the mother of his child, the daughter of Michael Glinka, whom his own mother forbade him to see.
Stanchinsky died young. He could have been one of Russia’s greater composers, being a master at counterpoint and developing new ways of composing quickly. Suffering from dementia praecox, which caused periods of nervous breakdown as well as periods of extreme enthousiasm and creativity, he might not have been able to develop in an ideal way, but I am sure he would have produced a stunning body of work might he have lived longer. He did not commit suicide, like some people suggest, it was just a matter of extreme bad luck, getting a heart-attack because of the cold water.
Stanchinsky was a religious man, drifting towards the life of a monk, trying to be as sincere as possible, getting rid of all earthly seductions, there is the apocryphal story by two farmers who claim they spoke to him the day before his death; he is supposed to have told them he was walking to a monastery in a straight line, without detour.
While writing this piece, the corona lockdown started, march 2020, and bit by bit my third concerto became a diary (in Dutch: dagboek, daybook), writing a segment every day and including all the restlessness this period caused in my head. The result was a year spent for 99 % at home, reading and waiting. That’s where ‘the book’ comes in three times: Stanchinsky carried a valuable book (“the life of saint Alexis, a man of God”), writing the concerto felt like a diary (daybook) and in 2020 I read more books then ever. ‘Eveningbook – Nightbook’ is the shadowed canonic variation on ‘daybook’.

Piet-Jan van Rossum, March 2021